ElectronicWaste
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Europe takes another stab at standardizing phone chargers
The European Union has been trying for nearly a decade to get smartphone manufacturers to voluntarily agree to a common mobile phone charger. That apparently hasn't worked out so well, so the EU Commission may now take more forcible action, according to Reuters. "Given the unsatisfactory progress with this voluntary approach, the Commission will shortly launch an impact assessment study to evaluate costs and benefits of different other options," said EU competition Chief Margrethe Vestager.
Japan may forge Olympic medals from recycled smartphones
If you caught Japan's teaser for the 2020 Summer games in Tokyo, you know the nation is planning to lean hard on its pop-culture icons -- but Tokyo may also use the Olympics to make a statement about sustainability. According to a report from Nikkei, the organizers of the 2020 games are thinking about using recycled electronics to forge the next summer games' Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals.
Europe doesn't properly recycle most of its electronic waste
You probably know that you should recycle your old tech when you're done with it, but getting other people to do the same? That's quite hard, apparently. The United Nations and INTERPOL have found that only 35 percent of the European Union's electronic waste in 2012, about 3.2 million imperial tons, was recycled properly. The rest (6.1 million tons) was either exported, recycled improperly or trashed. And that's a problem beyond just the expected environmental issues, such as toxins making their way into landfills. Many crooks take advantage of this lapse by scavenging and smuggling e-waste -- that old laptop you chucked out might be a gold mine for a bootlegger hoping to sell its parts or raw metals.
Recommended Reading: The problem with Record Store Day
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Record Store Day and the Ambivalent Branding of Independence by Eric Harvey Pitchfork Record Store Day celebrates the culture of independent record shops each spring. Today marks the eighth annual holiday for vinyl collectors and music lovers, but the event is becoming packed with more big names each year. Whether it's Jack White's world record or releases from Metallica or Foo Fighters, celebrities are now just as much a part of the festivities, and distributors seem to be favoring bigger shops over smaller, local spots.
United Nations identifies e-waste as an urgent and growing problem, wants change
E-waste might be one of the biggest misnomers in the history of nomery -- the image it creates in the mind is of a bunch of email and document files clogging up your local internet pipes. The reality of it is that electronic waste is rapidly populating ever-growing landfill areas in so-called developing countries (they're poor, just call a spade a spade) and the issue has now garnered the attention of the United Nations. The UN Environment Programme has issued a wideranging report warning that e-waste in China and South Africa could double or even quadruple within the next decade, whereas India could experience a five-fold rise. Major hazards exist in the unregulated and informal recycling of circuit boards and techno gadgets, as processes like backyard incineration for the retrieval of gold generate toxic gases while also being wildly inefficient. The whole point of the report is to encourage some global cooperation in setting up modern and safe recycling facilities in the affected countries to ameliorate the problem, though being generally more careful in our consumption and disposal of electronics wouldn't do the environment's chances any harm either.
